Many thanks to all who have in any way helped me get things to this stage.

Present setup is in my sig.

Top 140mm fan removed and mesh sealed up using cardboard, cut to size and painted with black oil paint (camera flash evident).

The left side panel given the same treatment.

Both side panels were covered with a layer of bitumen tape before speaker foam was applied. The foam already had a pre-applied layer of bitumen for extra density. The panels now have a satisfying dull thud sound to them when knocked on.

Front fan cages snipped and u-channeled. I only stabbed myself with the sharp bits once.

Rear mesh snipped and u-channeled. You can also see the Arctic F8 that replaced the stock fan in the Earthwatts 430.

The system. Egg crate foam on top and bottom of case. I'll probably go modular for the PSU with my next rig.

Close up of the Arctic 64 Pro heatsink with 92mm Nexus attached. Four silicone grommets were placed on the bungee cord behind the fan to reduce any possible vibration. Fan is attached using 3mm bungee cord.

HDD suspended using four loops of 3mm bungee cord, 4x19mm washers and spare thumbscrews ( you get loads of them with the case).

HDD suspension viewed from above.

Suspension for the backup hard drive in the 5.25 bay. The drive isn't permenently installed bcause I only backup as and when I feel necessary (normally once a month), and I don't generally add lots of of data during that time.

And finally... some temps and readings.

The fan speed for the GPU can be disregarded. For some reason the Twin Turbo acts flaky and won't give a stable reading below 50% fan speed. Also, the speedfan reading for CASE refers to the front and rear 120mm Nexus fans, as they're all on the one header. CPU, Sys and HD0 temps will all normally rise by about 3C if the room is warmer than normal, or if more windows/applications are running. At the point of time, the only thing running was my messenger program (main window, 2 webcam windows and a call to my fiancee in America). Case and CPU fans are raised to 60-65% before gaming. GPU fans stay at 41% at all times and the card has never reached 50C during gaming since the aftermarket cooler was added.

At the moment the GPU and the HDD are equally as loud. Though the HDD is the more prominent of the two due to it being closer to the front of the case. Their combined noise is still nowhere near loud. It's more of a humming sound than anything else. I sleep with my head about 1.5 metres away from the front of the case, and it's barely audible at that distance.

I've never stress tested the system parts, so I don't know if these will suffice. Probably the closest it's ever come to having all components put to heavy use is while gaming. So I can get a quick reading from Speedfan and GPU-Z after a couple of hours of Left 4 Dead if you'd like.

In the meanwhile, I ran Furmark for ten minutes, and these were the results. Not sure if they're of any use to you, but then, I've never used Furmark before now. It's worth noting that I allowed the card to control the fan speed so there would be a stable and reliable reading for that. The case and CPU were left at their normal 45% fan speed.

clean build but the psu looks strange, never seen a psu blowing in hot air in the case, can't be that good.

Thanks. The cablegami could be a little better maybe, but it's fine as is. I've no idea what gave you the impression that the PSU is blowing hot air in the case, but I can assure you that it's exhausting air out the back.

Great job with that cutting and damping, though I'd say you could easily ditch out the two front fans, it looks somewhat "overfanned" this way, even though it looks quiet enough overall. Or, you could open up the rest of the PCI brackets to let some more air out and get better temperatures from that sweating chipset.

Great job with that cutting and damping, though I'd say you could easily ditch out the two front fans, it looks somewhat "overfanned" this way, even though it looks quiet enough overall. Or, you could open up the rest of the PCI brackets to let some more air out and get better temperatures from that sweating chipset.

I would leave one Front 120mm to bring in fresh air, I've done the same with my 300. Two fans is more the enough and I've also installed open PCI brackets from sliverstone.

My apologies for any late replies. For some reason I didn't receive any notifications about your posts. Had I not decided to peruse both pages of recent posts, I still wouldn't have known about them.

@frenchie - Thank you very much

@Parappaman +johnniecache7 - Thanks for the advice. At present I've removed the remaining PCI brackets, but don't want to remove any fans. They don't add anything but the slightest of humming to the overall noise. But more importantly, the fans on my Twin Turbo died last Saturday and I'm still waiting for their replacement to turn up. It couldn't have happened at a worse time. The temp outside has regularly been over 20C for most of the last week, and despite opening the windows, there's no sort of breeze in the room. Without fans on it the Twin Turbo is idling at low to mid 50C's, but all that heat is just warming things up within the case.

The northbridge chipset is somewhat famed for running hot on the particular board I have. It would seem it can handle it, but I do know the issue was mainly due to the size of the heatsink on the chipset being insufficient. Call it a design flaw on Gigabyte's part. It was addressed from v1.1 of the board onward. I've read that the larger heatsink did make a difference, though I don't know how significant a difference. How they could not have known about the problem when they first released the board is beyond me.

Very nice build. Looks bit like my Three Hundred, just lesser fans. Thanks for the idea how to mount my HDD. I modified your idea and used the strip my WD 640 GB Black with VibeFixer / NoVibesIII same way you did.

My HDD temps dropped 11 degree's C.

_________________If seeing is believing, how can blind person believe in anything?Maturity is just not experience in life but also ability to make compromises.

Haych: yeah, you can click link: Machines of Torturga to see old position in my Siggy. I just spend 5 mins correcting image links since I made new arrangement in subfolders in Photobucket and many were lost due it. No fans in 5.25" expansion slots. Mounting it directly to 120mm fans did things. Your pictures gave me Heureka-idea. I had thought bit how to mount my HDD in three hundred to drop temperatures without increasing noise. Your pictures were valuable catalyst.

I have to take pictures soon. I love doing macro shots with my Nikon D-60

_________________If seeing is believing, how can blind person believe in anything?Maturity is just not experience in life but also ability to make compromises.

Truly my pleasure, jamppa. The photos of your 300 you did for the Machines of Tortuga post really inspired me with ways to get my rig in better order. It's nice to know that I've reciprocated in some small way

the fans on my Twin Turbo died last Saturday and I'm still waiting for their replacement to turn up. It couldn't have happened at a worse time. The temp outside has regularly been over 20C for most of the last week, and despite opening the windows, there's no sort of breeze in the room. Without fans on it the Twin Turbo is idling at low to mid 50C's, but all that heat is just warming things up within the case.

I have the twin turbo pro on my HD4770 but only because the Accelero S1 Rev. 2 doesn't fit the HD4770, it's great VGA heatsink. I suggest you buy your self Accelero S1 Rev. 2 it does fit the HD 4850 you can try running it passive which I would try first if your not happy with the temps zip tie 120mm fan to it.

Nice build, looks very similar to my 300 rig in my sig. The only major diferences where silencing is concerned are that I used vinyl tiles to pad out my side panels and my HDDs aren't suspended at the moment, just screwed in with some silicone washers.

Oh, and I also have a fan on the side panel with a filter on the outside which I might replace for just a fan frame to keep the filter there. Otherwise I'd be left with an ugly, roughly cut hole.

I'ts plenty quiet enough for me. My rig and my head are on opposite sides of the room to eachother, so I can't hear it at all at night.

@johnniecache7 - Apologies for the late reply. I didn't receive a notification for your or antivenom's post. Thanks for the advice regarding the S1 Rev.2. The replacement fans for my Twin Turbo arrived on Monday, and my temps are back to acceptable levels again. Crisis averted... for now

@antivenom - You should post some photos of your build, if you haven't already. I'm always interested to see how other people have built their 300 rig.

I'd just like to ask, have you tried to remove the top and rear fans then cover the rear with maybe foam? then use only the 2 front 120mm fans for intake? (was thinking about the postive pressure effect?)

Thanks for the compliment. I've never tried the fan setup that you asked about, but if you try it yourself, I'd be interested to read about your results. I used double sided sticky tape (normally used for carpets) to attach the foam on the top of the case. It keeps the foam in place but isn't a completely permanent solution, so you may want to use the same sort of thing if you can. That way, if you're not happy with the rear being covered you can easily remove the foam.

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